Minimum wage laws are to all practical intents as yet untried in the United States. Even their validity remains doubtful, for the Supreme Court still holds undecided the test case argued nearly a year ago. Un Australia, where analogous laws have been in operation for over ten years, it is different, and in the current number of the Harvard Law Review one may learn from Mr.

In the illuminating study of "Administrative Mobilization' published in another part of this issue, Mr. Graham Wallas winds up a discussion of what the United States might do in peace in order to prepare specifically for war with a startling piece of advice.

Letters from Missouri
The Goose and the Golden Eggs
Sir: We have been greatly stirred these last months by announcements that because of the European war the United States would shortly capture the trade of the world. Our Chamber of Commerce has created a Foreign Trade section, and we have adopted resolutions urging the rehabilitation of our merchant marine. We are not much disturbed to hear that the LaFollette bill is going to but American shipping entirely out of business.

More ingenious use of Scripture has rarely been made than in a recent preliminary report of the National Association of Manufacturers. The document deals with the legislative minimum wage. It will repay reading by anyone who wishes to mix laughter with his tears. He will find that the discussion begins at the beginning, with Genesis, in fact, from which we learn that Jacob worked seven years in payment for each of his wives, Leah and Rachel, and six years more for the possession of a herd of cattle.

As a would-be democrat, I should like to believe passionately in the movies. I am told constantly of their great educational possibilities. By the innocent and ubiquitous movies we are to be made over, insensibly led to higher things. Buoyed by such hopes, I go with ever-renewed courage. But into that democrat that I long to be I shall never be made by such exhibitions as "The White Terror," "an educational feature film in four reels," sponsored by the National Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis.

Last week THE NEW REPUBLIC insisted that we cannot talk with much point about preparedness until we have answered the question, prepared for what? Behind any question about arming or disarming lies the question of how we intend to act as a nation among nations. Until we know, at least in a general way, what part we mean to play in the world’s affairs, we shall never have even the vaguest notion of whether we are underarmed or overarmed.

Considering the many ties of business and of association which bind Americans and Canadians together, the American people are culpably obtuse to the present plight of their northern neighbors. The Canadians are passing through a great crisis in their national history. At an unfortunate moment in their economic development, when the work of taking possession of their rich natural heritage was suffering a costly check, they were suddenly compelled to accept their losses and divert their capital and energy to an essentially foreign service.

No one can be more tired than the reformer of the perpetual cry that disaster is the price of competitive anarchy. For at least a generation radicals in England have been arguing that industry conducted as a scramble for profits was a menace to the country. They pointed to the normal horrors of peace, they painted pictures of what might be, and were put down as theorists who did not comprehend the sacred mysteries of business. They were treated as the trustees of Pennsylvania’s university or the New York Times would like them to be treated.

Political Thought in England from Herbert Spencer to To-day, by Ernest Barker. (Home University Library.) New York: Henry Holt and Co. 50 cents net.
When peace has at last been signed, and the world becomes in some sort a reasonable place, Englishmen will be compelled to turn to the reconstruction of their political life. What is the mental attitude in which they will approach that task? Whence will be drawn its deepest inspiration? To these questions Mr. Barker's book is in some sort an answer.
It is a valuable book.